Free summaries
Novels — page 12
1,233 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 12 of 26.
Chance in Chains: A Story of Monte Carlo
Guy Thorne
A young inventor uses a directed wireless pulse to manipulate a Monte Carlo roulette wheel, securing the fortune he needs to marry and fund his scientific work.
Eden: An Episode
Edgar Saltus
A gilded Manhattan apartment turns into a labyrinth of suspicion when a young bride discovers that a single unexamined secret can corrode an entire world of luxury.
Interrupted
Pansy
When financial ruin disrupts a young woman’s comfortable social circle, she turns an unwanted teaching job in a small town into a quiet campaign for community renewal, personal faith, and practical usefulness.
Pietro Ghisleri
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
A poisonous rumor in nineteenth-century Rome sets two sisters against one another, turning aristocratic drawing rooms into a battlefield where envy weaponizes social malice.
Sunny-San
Onoto Watanna
In Nagasaki, four young Americans rescue a bright, biracial girl from a joyhouse, binding their fates to her joyous, unpredictable journey across two oceans to New York.
![Cover of The Cabin [La barraca]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/the-cabin-la-barraca-vicente-blasco-ibanez.webp)
The Cabin [La barraca]
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Generations of spite turn a fertile Spanish plain into a battleground where an innocent family’s dream of bread becomes a burnt offering.
The Vanishing Point
Coningsby Dawson
Two parallel rails of possibility and desire stretch toward a distant horizon where idealists seek their tragic, ultimate point of convergence.
Tony and the Beetles
Philip K. Dick
A young Terran boy raised on a conquered alien world faces a sudden reckoning when the balance of cosmic power tilts away from humanity.
Babes in the Bush
Rolf Boldrewood
A displaced Scottish family seeks a new beginning on an old Australian estate, confronting bushfires, wild country, and romantic missteps.
Gossamer
George A. Birmingham
A quiet, high-minded financial web spun across international borders meets the sudden, shattering blow of the First World War.
Modus Vivendi
John Berryman
In a world split between ordinary humans and targeted telekinetics, a cynical lawyer must play both sides to keep a young woman out of prison.
Rosa Mundi and Other Stories
Ethel M. (Ethel May) Dell
A young girl wanders down to a lonely coastal breakwater to escape a giant crab, only to interrupt a solitary novelist and spark a chain of secrets.
The Boy in the Bush
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
A young Englishman sent to 1880s Western Australia rejects conventional respectability, surviving bush dangers and personal losses to forge a fierce, independent destiny on the frontier.
Waste Not, Want
Dave Dryfoos
An eighty-six-year-old widower struggles to preserve his autonomy in a future society where citizens are legally forced to consume vast surpluses of goods.
Peace
Norman Arkawy
A bureaucratically cheerful conquest announcement slowly reveals that the peaceful alien victory Earth just suffered is actually a hyper-regulated, terrifying nightmare.
Ruth Erskine's Son
Pansy
A mother’s protective devotion faces its ultimate test when her beloved son’s hasty marriage threatens to upend their lives and unearth a buried family secret.
The Adventurer
C. M. (Cyril M.) Kornbluth
A ruthless tyrant falls not to chance, but to an orchestrated genetic and psychological experiment designed to breed the ultimate conqueror.
The Blue Tower
Evelyn E. Smith
A quiet young poet destroys humanity's gentle alien guardians when his earnest attempt to protect them accidentally breaches their deadly defenses.
The Easiest Way: Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911
Eugene Walter
A beautiful woman tries to trade a life of easy luxury for a honest marriage, only to find that her past—and her own weakness—will not let her go.
The Wedding Guest: A Friend of the Bride and Bridegroom
Unknown
The entry into marriage rarely comes with the maturity or self-knowledge needed to sustain it, leaving two independent minds to face the sudden, quiet shock of living as one.
Watch the Sky
James H. Schmitz
They thought they were fabricating an alien threat to line their pockets, until they discovered the lie they told was the terrifying truth.
Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life
Percival Christopher Wren
A soul born into two worlds, belonging fully to neither, carries inside himself the seeds of his own tragedy.
Walter Pieterse: A Story of Holland
Multatuli
A boy's boundless imagination collides with the stifling, pious respectability of mid-nineteenth-century Dutch middle-class life.
An index finger
Tulis Abrojal
This narrative explores the restless pursuit of spiritual truth, following a woman who rejects the suffocating conventions of her time to seek deeper meaning in the unseen forces of existence.
Anthony the Absolute
Samuel Merwin
A quiet, scholarly man finds his life of pure intellect upended when he becomes the reluctant protector of a desperate woman in turn-of-the-century Asia.
Creatures That Once Were Men
Maksim Gorky
A grim portrayal of the lives of the destitute in late 19th-century Russia, exploring the depths of human degradation and the flicker of humanity within.
Halima And The Scorpions: 1905
Robert Hichens
A foolish gamble born of pride and desert dust ends in the silent dark of the dunes.
Much Ado About Something
C. E. (Charles Edward) Lawrence
This fable of an enchanted intervention in the heart of London offers a whimsical yet earnest look at how a touch of magic might mend the social divides of a bustling, weary city.
The Blind Musician
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko
A blind boy struggles to find his place in a sighted world, eventually discovering that true sight comes not from his eyes, but from the depth of his connection to others’ suffering.
The Blue Venus
Robert Emmett McDowell
The fugitive known as The Renegade orchestrates a daring infiltration of a cruel plantation owner’s estate, turning the tables on a man whose reach extends from illicit human experimentation to the exploitation of planetary serfdom.
The Life and Adventures of Guzman D'Alfarache, or the Spanish Rogue, vol. 2/3
Mateo Alemán
This picaresque narrative follows a self-proclaimed rogue whose life is a restless cycle of petty crime, elaborate schemes, and moral posturing. It serves as a sharp, cynical mirror held up to the human condition, detailing the downfall of a man who believes he can outsmart fortune itself.
The McBrides: A Romance of Arran
John Sillars
A boy steps out from an Island window, drawn into a web of smugglers, old mountain feuds, and fierce Scottish ties.
Tom Clark and His Wife: Their Double Dreams, And the Curious Things that Befell Them Therein
Paschal Beverly Randolph
HOOK A fractious, unhappy couple finds their salvation through the mystical power of dreams, discovering that the health of a marriage is a choice rooted in the soul rather than the courtroom.
A Christian Woman
Pardo Bazán, Emilia, condesa de
A young man finds himself caught in the suffocating gravitational pull of an uncle’s loveless marriage, where duty and desire collide with the rigid expectations of nineteenth-century Spanish life.
Barrington. Volume 2 (of 2)
Charles Lever
A dispossessed gentleman and his family navigate the intrigue of a cunning imposter while struggling to regain their lost inheritance.
Cleo The Magnificent
Louis Zangwill
A young poet discovers that the true weight of existence is found not in his private, mystical reveries, but in the gritty, unavoidable demands of the everyday world.
Imogen: A Pastoral Romance
William Godwin
This pastoral romance traces the arduous journey of two innocent lovers through a landscape of ancient legend, where virtue acts as a shield against the supernatural machinations of a corrupted magician. It explores the enduring power of sincerity when tested by the trials of a complex world.
Ticket No. "9672"
Jules Verne
A young woman’s romantic hopes become entangled with the cold calculations of a predatory lender when a message in a bottle surfaces from a shipwrecked lover. This story explores how fortune—both financial and existential—can hinge on the most improbable threads of coincidence.
Woman
Magdeleine Marx
A woman’s search for identity unfolds against the backdrop of war, challenging the inherited traditions of marriage, motherhood, and the stifling domestic expectations placed upon her gender.
Christmas Roses and Other Stories
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
Winter’s harshness serves as the backdrop for these delicate, probing studies of internal quietude and the persistent, often painful, effort required to sustain human affection.
The Pond
Carl Ewald
Life in a quiet corner of the natural world is a precarious, exhausting, and often brutal affair. Through the eyes of a pair of nesting reed-warblers, the daily struggle for survival reveals a reality far removed from human sentimentality.
A Canadian Bankclerk
Jack Preston
This novel follows a young man’s disillusionment as he trades the promise of higher education for the rigid, underpaid life of a junior bank clerk in early 20th-century Canada. It is a candid look at the quiet traps of white-collar drudgery.
Little Johannes
Frederik van Eeden
A young boy wanders from the safety of his home into a realm of spirit and symbol, only to discover that the path to truth requires embracing the suffering of humanity.
Luna Benamor
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
These stories capture the intersection of ancient prejudice and modern instability, where rigid traditions collide with the fragile, flickering lives of individuals trapped by their own histories.
Parables of a Province
Gilbert Parker
The human spirit finds its way home through silence, sacrifice, and the persistent pull of memory. These fables map the rugged terrain of the soul, where the weight of a choice can outlast the mountains.
The Green Goddess
William Archer
This is a taut, atmospheric thriller about a trio of stranded travelers facing a cold, calculating despot in an isolated Himalayan kingdom. It is a story of moral high-stakes, simmering interpersonal resentment, and the brutal collision of cultures.
The Shadow of the Cathedral
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
A broken revolutionary seeks sanctuary within the vast, decaying walls of the Toledo Cathedral, only to find that the ancient institution he despises is as fragile as his own failing health.
'Possum
Mary Grant Bruce
A family exchanges the polished comfort of suburban life for the rugged, unpredictable reality of an Australian farm. Their journey toward self-reliance is a testament to the transformative power of shared labor and new horizons.